


Things That Go Bump in the Night

by weaksauce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, M/M, christmas shenanigans, davekat - Freeform, t rating is just for the swears, this is really silly and ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17162588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaksauce/pseuds/weaksauce
Summary: 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...Until Karkat and Dave hear a strange sound in the night, and Karkat needs to go investigate what could have caused it.





	Things That Go Bump in the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vulpineRamblings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpineRamblings/gifts).



> This is for Shikaru!! Merry Christmas, and I hope that you enjoy reading this silly thing! (:

The soft shuffling sound of wood sliding against wood from somewhere far away pulls you away from sleep. You feel a light squeeze on your mittened hand. Your eyes open to see Dave looking in the direction of the bedroom door. Neither of you have had very good experiences with things that go bump in the night, and you’re both extremely light sleepers because of it.

Here on Earth C, your lives had been free from the burdens of possibly life-threatening terrors or moonlit fights, but old anxiety dies hard. Dave had checked out the cause of a strange sound last time (conclusion: wind — it’s always fucking wind), so this time it’s your turn. It really had become somewhat of a routine. At this point, the checking isn’t really a matter of security — at least, it hadn’t ever been before — but a matter of the two of you having enough peace of mind to get the fuck back to sleep and stay that way until morning.

Wordlessly, you rub your eyes with your godawful mittens, which are intended to keep your sharp nails from turning your sopor slime-filled bed into some kind of spectacularly slippery waterfall. You have matching socks for your clawlike toenails, and matching knitted covers for your horns (which may not be necessary because they aren’t sharp enough to poke holes in your bed, but your pride says otherwise), but other than that you prefer to sleep in your boxers to make this bed feel as much like a recooperacoon as possible. It’s a piss-poor substitute, but you guess it’s worth it to be able to sleep next to Dave. At least your side is deeper and easier to sink into than his downright uncomfortable-looking firm side of the bed.

You begin the process of pulling yourself out of bed to investigate the sound, and the slime inside your mattress squelches with the effort of letting you out of its grasp. When both of your sock-clad feet are finally on the floor, you let out a groan as you head toward the door to go find the source of the mystery sound. Dave looks on drowsily behind you, his red eyes already half-lidded with sleep again as he watches from the comfort of the bed. Dick. Well, maybe that’s a little unfair. He did get out of bed at the asscrack of dawn to investigate a tapping sound that only your sensitive ears could hear last time.

He gives you a little wave from his place in bed and pulls the blanket further over his shoulders. No. You were right. He’s definitely a dick. You give him a nice look at your longest and most well-loved finger before opening the bedroom door quietly—you have no idea why you’re being this cautious for a sound that will probably turn out to be the wind—and step into the hallway. 

When you get into the hallway, however, you hear a _thump_. This one is louder than before. What the fuck. A _bump_. Another, louder, this time definitely a footstep. This is not the wind. Your hands feel clammy inside the ugly mittens, and your tongue feels dry and heavy.

You look around for the closest weapon-shaped thing. Your eyes desperately scan the hallway, left, right. On the right, there’s the bathroom. Your still-mittened-hand reaches out and grabs the toilet brush. It’ll do. This will at least make an intruder pause if they’re hit hard enough in the head with it. It’s probably some strange fan of Dave’s, someone who’s breaking in to see if gods sleep, or some entirely batshit reason like that. It’s incredibly uncommon, but not even a year ago some self-proclaimed ‘fan’ had camped outside of Rose and Kanaya’s place for a whole day, waiting for them to come out.

As your mind races through the possibilities, you take a deep breath and continue padding stealthily down the hallway, shitty socks actually coming in handy for once. The footsteps of the crazed fanatic sound louder now, like they’re wearing the clunkiest goddamn boots ever made. Not a very sneaky fuckball, are they? You keep your ‘weapon’ at the ready as you reach the corner, which is all that obscures the living room from view. You have to do this… For that dick, Dave. Well, he’s not just any dick. He’s your dick. Maybe not with that phrasing. Fuck.

3, 2, 1…

You jump out from the behind the corner, toilet brush over you head and ready to smite anyone stupid enough to invade your house down where they stand.

The intruder rears his ugly head to face you, teeth bared, eyes gleaming in the dim light from the window—

Oh, wait, you know those teeth, and they’re not bared… He’s smiling. You know the glasses framing those eyes that are gleaming, not with murderous intent, but with mirth. You know this person, and you’re not sure if that makes you less angry or more angry that he’s here unannounced at such an asinine time of day.

“John, what the fuck are you doing in my house at two in the morning?” you ask him, now sure that the answer to that is definitely that you’re more angry. Some kind of weird god fanatic at least has a reason to want to break in to your house. What reason could someone you call a friend possibly have for making your exhausted ass roll out of bed in an anxious panic?

John’s smile fades a little at your tone, and he gestures at his outfit. “Can’t you tell?” he asks whimsically.

The whimsy is completely and utterly unappreciated. You want to stomp all over his goddamn whimsy. However, you reluctantly glance at John’s bright red outfit with white fur lining, eyes lingering for a moment on those humongous boots—the apparent culprits of those clunky footsteps you heard earlier. There are five shiny green and red boxes on the floor near his feet, most likely from the large burlap bag slung over his shoulder.

“Please don’t tell me that you broke into my house at two in the fucking morning to play out some bizarre childhood fantasy of becoming Kris goddamn Pringle.” You keep the toilet brush in your hand in case John says something that makes you want to chuck it at him, but lower it slightly.

“You mean Kris Kringle!” he says, much too cheerfully. “And, well, I think almost every human probably had a childhood fantasy of being Santa Claus and delivering presents.” He finishes putting one last present on the ground under a single pine tree-shaped air freshener, which Dave had ‘ironically’ chosen to decorate elaborately and hang from the ceiling, almost obscured from view. “Sorry if I woke you up,” he adds, looking at your rather unfortunate attire.

You refuse to glance down at yourself, just remembering after the initial panic and then rage that you’re wearing only your boxers and wooly foot, hand, and horn warmers. You refuse to feel embarrassed about what you’re wearing when someone is only seeing you like this because they broke into your home. After all of this, a simple, ‘Sorry if I woke you up,’ isn’t good enough. If there were ever a time to hurl your toilet brush straight at John’s face, now would be it. But you’ve been better at controlling your anger since coming to Earth C, well, really since living with Dave.

“Well consider your vapid-ass completely useless fantasy lived out because you succeeded not only in emulating a strange elderly human who takes an absurd amount of pleasure from sneaking around in others’ homes and snacking the fuck away on their lovingly-made grubloaf, but also in destroying the one infinitesimally small shred of peace and quiet that I managed to get today before whispering a final ‘fuck you’ to any privacy I had left.”

John opens his mouth as if he’s going to correct something or point out some other useless fact about his hero, the fabled man in the red suit, but you stop him before he can. “Also,” you continue. “How many of these—” you gesture vaguely to the presents on the floor— “are actually pranks? Take those little extra kicks to my ass disguised as gifts with you.”

“Alright, alright, jeez,” says John, picking up two of the six gifts he put on the ground and stuffing them hastily back into his bag. “I promise the last four are real, alright? …And, Karkat?”

“Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!” John gives you a big grin before clomping over to the window, which is what you guess was his point of entrance and the cause of the original wood on wood sliding sound. You want to groan at the sheer volume of his holiday cheer as he sits on the window ledge, about to go break into another house, you assume. “Oh, and I am sorry for coming over unannounced and uninvited. I hope the presents at least kind of make up for it,” he says sincerely before flying off into the inky nighttime sky, becoming a small red dot and disappearing behind a rooftop.

“…Merry Christmas, John… I guess,” you say under your breath, and the window snaps shut and locks itself from the inside by a seemingly invisible force behind ‘Santa’ as he continues on his noble quest to deliver a mixture of pranks and presents to the other inhabitants of Earth C.

Your original drowsiness from before this whole John situation hits you again like a ton of bricks, and you drop off your trusty toilet brush on your way back to your room. Dave is facing away from you as you climb back into bed next to him, and you’re actually a little surprised that he was able to sleep through your not-so-quiet conversation with John. Taking a deep breath, you let the tension in your muscles dissolve into the sopor-filled mattress.

“So,” Dave’s voice comes groggily out of the form you’d improperly assumed to be sleeping beside you. “John dressed as Santa, then? How lame was it on a scale of ‘radically so’ to ‘embarrassingly so’? Would I have been shitting myself, or would I have just felt really bad second-hand embarrassment for the guy? Actually, you don’t even have to answer that for me to know which one.” He turns around to face you, expression deadpan, but with a hint of amusement. “Wish I could say that it surprises me even one fuckin’ microscopic amount that John would use the new planet we created as an excuse to overthrow the old Earth Santa and take his jolly ass throne.”

“He broke into our fucking house and tried to intermingle ‘prank’ presents with the real ones.” You can feel your eyebrows furrow when you even start thinking about the idiocy of the concept of leaving ‘prank’ presents in someone’s home.

Dave reaches out a finger to your furrowed brow, touching it right in the middle in that special place that makes it smooth out. He lets his finger linger there for a moment, and you can’t help but look at his face. He’s backlit by the ambient glow of the night sky, making his bedhead look like a slightly luminescent blond crown. His face looks so much softer these days, and smiling seems to come more easily to him than those years before when you first met. Fuck, you’ve been just gazing at him for too long. But you also realize that he paused before he kept talking. “Yeah, sounds like something he would do,” he says finally, his finger dropping from your forehead, hand quickly removing your mitten prison and clasping around your now-bare hand. “…Hey, merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Dave,” you say, squeezing his hand a little in your own. When did being together become so comfortable? It sounds ridiculous, but being together feels as natural as breathing, talking to him as natural as talking to yourself. He makes you want to treat him better, makes you want to treat yourself better too, without even trying. The two of you lie in silence for a little while, utterly cozy, just looking at one another as your eyes slowly close. With the source of the noise located and identified, you guess it’s about time to get back to sleep. Right as you’re on the verge of drifting off, you feel a light squeeze on your hand, which gets a little tighter. 

“What do you want to talk about?” you ask, voice croaky with oncoming sleep as you blink your eyes open.

Dave cracks open one eye drowsily. “Oh… nothing,” he says, letting his hand rest.

You open your eyes more fully. “When you squeeze my hand like that, it’s because you want to talk about something. What is it?”

Dave looks at you, blinking himself from a half-lidded gaze to slight alertness. “Just… Living here, with you. It’s good. And I hope it never changes.”

The sincerity of his nighttime confession of feelings makes a smile take over your face. “Yeah, me too,” you say, and you see a matching smile spreading itself across Dave’s face as well. The two of you take a moment to savor the sleepy glow of a completely genuine and loving feelings spill, grinning at each other like idiots, like you’d just come to the realization for the first time that the other actually likes being around you after all these years.

And it’s like that that the two of you fall into a perfectly sound sleep, hands clasped, smiles on your faces, completely comfortably. You’re not sure what kinds of potentially mind-numbing pranks could still await you in the boxes that John guaranteed were most definitely not pranks tomorrow, but for now, you couldn’t care less. For now, in this moment, you have everything you need and more.

—

But, unfortunately, the time to see what is in those ghastly green and red packages under your incognito air freshener tree does come. Now far away from the comfort of your bed, you and Dave sit on the rug, presents looming ominously in front of you.

Two of them are labeled, one ‘Dave’ and one ‘Karkat,’ but the other two are a label-less mystery.

You eye them suspiciously, but Dave seems to know where to start. “Hey, open the green one with no label first.”

“No fucking way I’m opening the green one with no label. That’s the sketchiest fucking present I’ve ever seen,” you grumble. “You open the green one with no label.”

“Sure, no problem, dude. I was just trying to give you the best one, but I see how it is, not trusting me about it and all. I mean, we’ve only been together for, what, fuckin’ just years on years on years, and you still don’t trust me to think about John’s pranking methods and painstakingly choose the absolute best package of the bunch—the guaranteed creamiest of the crop—for you?” says Dave, shrugging and reaching out for the green package.

You have a split decision to decide if Dave is completely bullshitting or not, and of course he’s always bullshitting, but is it really possible that he chose the best one for you? There’s no way that there is any logic behind how John wrapped these ridiculous presents… right?

You grab Dave’s arm with your hand, deciding that the gifts are probably all pranks, none better or worse than the rest. “Okay, I’ll open the green creamy crop present or whatever the fuck you said about it to try and make it sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Dave retracts his hands, letting you open the unmarked green box ever so graciously. “Be my guest, man,” he says, reaching instead for the red one. “I’ll do the red one at the same time. I think I’ve figured out John’s tricks after knowing him, like, my whole life, and I think that I’m giving you a real good deal here. I’m honestly kind of jealous of your present, really. I’m so good at reading John’s mind that I can almost guess what’s inside. I just got right into his mind like a fuckin’ little brain worm, some sci-fi movie shit going on in this house right now.”

“The more you talk, the less brain power I have to expend on whatever ridiculous prank is inside of this box. Let’s just open them on 3,” you say, just ready to get this whole anonymous present fiasco over and done with.

“You got it,” Dave says, giving you one last look before looking down at the box in front of him, hands prepared to open it.

“1, 2…”

“Wait, are we going on 3 or on ‘go’ after 3?”

“I said that we’re going on 3—“ you say, and Dave opens his as soon as you mention the number. You open yours, too, rolling your eyes ever-so lovingly at his antics.

You’re surprised by what’s inside, but not because it’s a prank. Swaddled in colorful tissue paper is none other than a paper towel holder.

You look to your right to see Dave somewhat quizzically holding up a soap dispenser. Had John learned some semblance of subtlety, of incredibly mundane gift-giving etiquette? Also, what the fuck? 

Dave pulls a small letter out of his box, reading it out. “People said that they were tired of my gag gifts, so I decided to try practical ones this year. Hope you get a lot of use out of them! - John.” A short pause as you both look from each other to the two remaining presents—the ones with your names on them. They gain a whole new suspicion after these almost absurdly tame gifts.

Apparently thinking the same thing, Dave fetches a long pair of tongs from the kitchen and a pillow from the sofa to use as a shield to open the present with his name on it from a safe distance. Not uttering a word, the two of you nod at each other and duck down behind the pillow shield as Dave opens the present… 

And out sprays multicolored silly string, sticking to the pillow shield. The second the two of you tentatively drop the shield, however, a second stream of the stuff sprays and nails Dave right in the face. A little shocked, he lets out a small high-pitched “Ack,” noise that you’ve never heard him or any other human make before.

You didn’t want to admit that John’s pranks were funny, because they’re absolutely not fucking funny, but Dave’s stoic expression combined with his new multicolored beard, along with that actual shriek make you crack a fraction of a smile. “Dave, I didn’t know you were capable of making a noise only ever heard before in the grub caverns. I actually didn’t know that your human sound pockets could produce a sound quite as fucking exquisite as that one,” you say.

“Of course,” Dave says, doing that small frown he does when he’s trying way too hard not to smile, “Such is life for the bastard love child of Mariah Carey and an actual dolphin.” He wipes off the silly string and hands you the tongs and the pillow, and you remember with annoyance that the gift marked ‘Karkat’ is still left on the floor in front of you.

Cautiously, the two of you use the same technique of hiding behind the pillows and carefully unwrapping the box with the tongs like it could detonate at any moment. You concentrate on the box, but when you open it, nothing happens. However, remembering what happened when you came out from behind the pillow prematurely last time, the two of you stay hidden behind your fluffy shield for a few moments more… Until it hits you. This was a biological attack.

“Oh, fuck.”

The mysterious smell emanating from the box is absolutely rancid, and it permeates the living room quickly. Immediately putting down the pillow shield and tongs, Dave and you grab the box at the same time and punt it out the window as quickly as possible. Even though the total time the box had been open had been only about twenty seconds, the smell lingers much longer, and would continue to until much later in the day. That damn Kris Pringle imposter got you.

Even after Dave waving around the ‘Christmas tree,’ the hellish aroma from John’s prank box that lays in the yard overstays its welcome.

\--

After a little of the chaos surrounding the day’s “presents” have died down, you and Dave rest in the bedroom, which is one of the last safe havens from the odor that was unleashed in your living room.

“Wait right the fuck here,” you tell him, and Dave looks a little questioning, but does as you say and stays in the bedroom. You make your escape into the hallway, but then poke your head back in briefly to say, “And I mean stay in here until I come back. Don’t come find me.”

“Uhh, alright,” says Dave, and you suppose that your wording was a little dramatic, but you really couldn’t be bothered right now because you have a lot of work to do.

You go to the kitchen, fetching out the supplies you’d been hoarding and keeping out of Dave’s sight, naturally, by keeping them in a place he almost never ventures to scavenge for food: the refrigerator. You’d only had your state in there for a couple days now, so it hadn’t been too terribly difficult to hide it from him, but now comes the really laborious part. You pull out some recipes that Jane had gifted you and get to work on preparing Dave an—albeit late—breakfast in bed.

You absolutely abhor the idea of breakfast in bed. The eating and leaving pieces of food in your bed, the greasy hands everywhere, the thought of a fork falling and piercing your precious slime mattress… But Dave had mentioned once that he thought breakfast in bed “like in those romantic movies you make me watch sometimes” looked nice, so here you are fiddling with pancake batter and bacon, trying to make a ‘proper’ breakfast in bed.

The pancake mix is straightforward enough, but getting the heat on the stove right is not exactly going your way. About two dozen burnt pancakes (you’ll eat those ones, it’s fine), probably about four hundred iterations of the word “fuck,” three unburnt pancakes, and a lot of time later, your perfect breakfast in bed is plated and ready for consumption. 

Slightly nervously (why are you nervous, he’s Dave, not a fucking food critic), you walk down the hallway with your steaming meals. Yours is significantly larger because it contains all of the fucked up food. You open the bedroom door, and Dave’s eyes widen at the sight of your delectable and romantic Earth breakfast. 

“Oh, you didn’t have to… Go through all the trouble, oh my fucking god. How many pancakes did you even make?” he says.

You hand him his plate. “I think the recipe called for a dozen, and I might have mangled and burnt the majority of them to a crisp, so… Here, these three are for you.”

Dave accepts the pancakes. “But you hate the idea of breakfast in bed. I think I remember you saying that it was, ‘the least sexy and most disgusting romantic trope imaginable’.”

“Yeah, well, you seemed to like it, so…” you trail off. “Just try it. Only this fucking once though.”

Dave gives you a small smile as he tries his pancakes. Upon the first bite, his smile flickers slightly, but he looks like he powers through something and continues eating his meal. “This is so fantastic that I don’t ever want to stop eating it… But oh!” he says, “Actually, now you wait here for a second. Don’t be afraid to chow down on these pancakes while I’m gone, too. But I’ll be right back.”

Dave runs out of the room as you had before, and you absentmindedly munch on a few of the burnt pancakes while he’s gone. You only learn one thing, and that’s that ‘pancakes’ suck. This must be one of the worst foods ever made. Maybe that’s why Dave’s expression had been weird the first time he bit into one. They’re surprisingly salty for something you pour sweet syrup all over… Seems like the people who made this food just took the salty and sweet thing way too fucking far.

When Dave reappears, he hands you a gift.

“Damnit, Dave. We said that we weren’t doing presents this year,” you say, looking up exasperatedly at his smug face.

“It’s nothing really… Just saw it and thought of you. Anyway, you gave me those awesome pancakes, which is definitely stomping on gift territory, so just… Open it.” You put your heaping plate of the nasty human delicacy on the side table and take Dave’s present into your hands. It’s surprisingly heavy, and about the size of a book. Maybe it was the romance novel you’d been eyeing at the library but hadn’t had the time to check out. The wrapping—silver with a gold bow—is surprisingly neat, and that alone makes you a little suspicious. It must have been done by someone else. You never saw the need for delicate and beautiful wrapping anyway, as it just gets ripped up and thrown away.

Stopping your inspection of the package, you pull off the ribbon and slip a clawed fingernail under the wrapping paper, ripping it open. What’s left in your hand among the silver and gold carnage of paper and ribbon is a notebook with your name engraved in it, dark red and about the size of a novel, along with several different fancy-looking pens. The journal has a loop to fit one pen snugly for travel. “It’s…” you swallow. “It’s really nice. Thanks, Dave.” You look up at him, not stopping yourself from grinning from ear to ear.

“I know that you love writing, so I thought you might write one of your own books sometime. It already has the author’s name on it,” he says, smiling back at you.

You thumb over your name engraved on the front fondly before giving Dave a hug. He hugs you back, and you relish in the warmth and comfort.

The events that had transpired in the past few hours had been ridiculous and mostly meaningless, you guess that the time you spent together along the way was the most meaningful thing. Yeah, that’s corny as hell, but a strange sound in the night, two terrible pranks, some awful food, and one nice gift later, why does this still feel like the best Christmas you’ve ever spent?


End file.
